Monday, January 29, 2007

dumb dumb

sometimes (often), i confuse some words which make me sound highly retarded in the course of some daily conversation. i have two examples of this for you here:

HYPERBOLE vs. PARABOLA
hyperbole: a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement
parabola: Set of points equally distant from a focus and a directrix.

on the "shut up you fucking baby" comedy cd by david cross, he talks about how president bush took a hyperbole pill when discussing terrorism post 9/11. at first i was very confused about why the big cheese would be taking pills that made him discuss 10th grade geometry. weird.

ANECDOTE vs. ANTIDOTE
anecdote: short account of an incident (especially a biographical one)
antidote: a remedy that stops or controls the effects of a poison

once when i tried to write a witty email to a bunch of coworkers i was telling a story, you know a giggley little anecdote, only i called it an antidote. like a flu shot. what a douche.

3 comments:

Audacious said...

Actually, a flu shot is more like a VACCINATION, rather than an antidote, because you get the shot to prevent the flu before it happens, not after you already have it. Not to be confused with a VACATION, which is what you take when you tell your boss that you have the flu.

grensley said...

oh god audrey

Anonymous said...

i have this same problem. but i think mine is more severe, like getting the names of herman melville and herman miller confused and then confused again with arthur miller since i am hypersensitive to the fact that i have this problem and try and self-correct.

i also mix up oscar wilde and gene wilder. this can be very confusing for others. . . "are you talking about the author of the importance of being earnest, or the actor portraying willy wonka? clearly their talent is of equal caliber."

and on a final note--i tried to look up all forms of dyslexia-type-learning-disabilities and related syndromes/diseases to explain this (and hopefully qualify for federal assistance). no dice.